ABSTRACT
Linesman remained unchanged in accordance with the policy agreed in 1960 for Plan Ahead, which was never in fact presented on the basis that it was needed to enable the fighter and SAGW forces to defend the deterrent. The Vice Chief of the Air Staff wrote to the Secretary of State in December 1961. By mid-1968, all the radar components of Linesman were operational, but the radar data handling system was still delayed by computer problems it was software, not hardware, which comprised the eventual constraint on the attainment of Linesman. As the Minister of Defence for Equipment noted in December 1968. Radar is an instrument that appears to produce dramatic time-space compression', enabling objects at a distance to be viewed as blips on a screen. In radar's early days, in the largely empty skies of World War II, such blips observed approaching the coasts of the UK could be assumed to be German.
